"One truth: that the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound, not to descant upon it, but to venerate it; that truth and falsehood are set before us for the trial of our hearts." ~Bl. John Henry Newman

Monday, May 23, 2011

Miriam the Philosopher.

Miriam offered to do the dishes last week, and I figured that a little splashing in the sink wouldn't hurt anyone. To my delight, she actually washed them effectively! She has been happily doing my lunch dish work for the last few days. She's thrilled to be a big girl. I'm thrilled to let her do the dishes.

As she approaches 6 years old (oh, wow), she's also becoming quite the existentialist.

If you have any answers (that do not involve Sartre) to the following, please let me know.

Miriam the Platonist: "Mummy? If Daddy had married a different Mummy, would I be Miriam?"

Miriam the Thomist: "Mummy. If God had not made me to be me, who would I have been?"

Bella (3 years old): "Miwiam is so silly!"

Miriam the Wittgensteinian: "Mummy? If Daddy had married a different Mummy, would he live in this house?"

Miriam the Aristotelian: "Mummy. Why is the world so wonderful?"

Mummy the Husserlian: "Mummy! When I am not here, the trees will still be here!"

to help her grasp personalism - we are persons, we are gifted with the capacity (receptivity) for relationship with others who share place and time with us, as our Heavenly Father does with his Son in the Holy Spirit?

SO...if mummy had a twin sister, and daddy had married her instead, she'd be a cousin to the family you (and not her father rather her uncle) were gifted with from God! God gifts life in this dynamic way, not reducible to a singular idea of our own chosing "I know I am (cogito ergo sum)" but expansive imaginings of creative "I love" (I serve). God sustains the life of the trees, and when they reach the limit God gave them in his wonderful design "when they aren't there anymore (ie are harvested, fall over in a storm, or simply rot away) their material mass can "serve" as wood for structures to protect other life forms or as detritus to compost and provide food for other life forms!

We are made incarnate however in God's image "whose property is always to have mercy"

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_of_Humble_Access

in our own personal existence here and now in His good time, and in His providential place ... in this world AND in the here-after... presently AND ever more...

"Yesterday is History, Tomorrow a Mystery, Today is a GiftThat's why it's called the Present"

God's 'present presence' is an everlasting gift inside the hearts of those who love him, a communio of relationship, rooted in the mystery of undeserved grace, reciprocated by way of same!

(for more a weighty reflection on orienting our existential certainty for grown-ups - experience time and place inside Sunday evening's tornado:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQnvxJZucds&feature=player_embedded

.. then extend it into eternity, and you have Dante's vision of the deepest pits of hell - frozen in a walk-in refrigerator of "non serviam")

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Every mother can be a student of philosophy and needs a way to learn answers to the great questions: who am I? where am I going and where did I come from? how do I know good and evil? what is there after life? The gift of motherhood is also a responsibility to form our minds and hearts for our children and husbands. This blog is a way for us to work together through these questions in the virtual communion of saints and sinners.